Can We Have Anti-Oppressive Feminisms Without Intersectionality?

Guest blog post written by Susan Manning, Mount Saint Vincent University.

On December 4, 2013, I had the privilege of hearing Harsha Walia speak at the Halifax Radical Imagination Project’s event titled “Anti-Oppressive Feminisms and Solidarities” at Dalhousie University. Harsha Walia is a Vancouver-based author and community organizer and was launching her new book Undoing Border Imperialism. She laid out a wonderful vision for what truly inclusive and anti-oppressive feminisms can look like. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Harsha’s talk as it was very relevant to my own academic and activist interests. She advocated that we move towards a set of anti-oppressive feminisms, which makes space for the experiences of diverse women and recognizes that we can’t fight patriarchy without also fighting other systems of oppression such as colonization, capitalism, racism that contribute to women’s experiences of patriarchy. I absolutely agree with Harsha’s argument, however I was surprised that she made no mention of the term ‘intersectionality’ in her talk. 

Intersectionality 101

Let’s do a quick ‘Intersectionality 101’ in case you are not familiar with the term. Intersectionality recognizes that multiple aspects of a woman’s identity (her gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, etc) intersect with systems of power that exist in our society (patriarchy, colonization, capitalism, racism, heteronormativity, etc.) to produce her unique experiences of privilege and oppression.

An Example in Practice

Despite this lack of usage of the term, I did feel that Harsha was definitely using an intersectional feminist framework to make her points throughout her talk. I would like to paraphrase one of her examples to show how this worked. Harsha discussed how feminism traditionally has had breaking the glass ceiling and allowing women to enter the workforce as one of its primary goals. However, this goal sometimes neglects to consider the circumstances of multiple groups of marginalized women. 

For example, coinciding with more women in Canada entering the workforce has been the creation of the Live-In Caregiver Program. It is widely acknowledged that this program is highly exploitative of the women from the Global South who come to Canada to be live-in caregivers. There are a number of vulnerabilities embedded in the structure of the program (including the requirement to live with employers, isolation from newcomer support networks and the constant threat of deportation should the women cease to be a live-in caregiver) that enables high rates of violence against women. 

The obvious solution to the childcare issue is the creation of a government funded universal childcare program. Yet, despite our best efforts, we have not had much success in achieving this goal in most of Canada, with Quebec’s system with a limited number of $7 per day childcare spots being the closest we’ve come. Instead, many wealthy and privileged women are enabled to work outside the home because of the live-in caregiver program and this comes directly at the expense of the labour and often exploitation of women from the Global South. This example from Harsha’s discussion clearly uses intersectionality to show us that childcare is certainly a priority of anti-oppressive feminisms.  

Are Our Anti-Oppressive Feminisms Necessarily Intersectional?

I truly believe we can’t have anti-oppressive feminisms without incorporating intersectionality into our practice. Harsha described anti-oppressive feminisms as being about more than just equality or inclusion. They’re about breaking apart what feminism means and reconstructing feminisms to serve the needs of multiple groups of women who are marginalized by different structures of power. They’re about building solidarities so that we can transform communities and the structures of power which inhibit freedom. 

In my mind, this would not be possible without using intersectionality. Intersectionality is a transformative change strategy which values many diverse forms of knowledge, especially those that have been silenced by our colonialist and capitalist society, and places them at the forefront of feminist activism and scholarship. It helps us to understand that difference does not necessarily mean inequality and that women at the intersections of different relationships of power have much to teach each other. 

I think that intersectionality has typically been associated with the feminism of the academy, and has been somewhat unaccessible to many women because of the institutional barriers that exist. But intersectionality has great potential if it is embraced by grassroots feminisms, whether they identify with the label feminist or not. Indeed, much of the work done on the ground with women at the margins who are facing oppressions in their daily life is already incorporating an intersectional perspective by necessity, as oppression rarely fits in one neat little box. 

Imagine what possibilities emerge if we can work together to build feminist solidarities across boundaries of identity and structures of power, using intersectionality as the base for our anti-oppressive work. 

Additional Resources For Your Interest:

If you’re in the Halifax area and are interested in intersectionality, Olena Hankivsky, Director of the Institute of Intersectionality Research and Policy at Simon Fraser University is speaking at Mount Saint Vincent University on December 4. More details can be found on the Nancy’s Chair Facebook page: www.facebook.com/nancyschairmsvu

Harsha Walia’s book webpage for Undoing Border Imperialism: http://www.akpress.org/undoing-border-imperialism.html

The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) has a number of intersectionality resources available on their website: http://criaw-icref.ca/

Susan Manning is a graduate student in the Masters of Arts in Women and Gender Studies jointly hosted between Mount Saint Vincent University and Saint Mary's University. Outside of school, she enjoys knitting, climbing and drinking many varieties of tea.